LawProse Lessons

Is we the people (or, in the Constitution, We the People) a set phrase that cannot be varied according to the grammar? Is it invariably we the people, or should we make it us the people when the phrase functions as the object of a verb or a preposition? We the people need to know; it’s […]

We hear a lot about brevity. I once knew a partner in a law firm who filed a one-word reply: “Nonsense!” Then “Respectfully submitted,” etc. That’s doubtless unduly truncated for 999 out of 1,000 situations. Yet brevity matters. Not if it’s insufficient, but only if it adequately says what needs saying without an extra word.

On Tuesday, a legal giant died: Thomas M. Reavley of Houston, who was a Fifth Circuit judge for 41 years and a Texas Supreme Court justice for 7. You can read his obituaries [here] and [here]. Two years after I finished my clerkship with Judge Reavley, he wrote the foreword to my first book—which has been carried through

It’s surprising how often advocates say a court should do something and then fail to adequately orient their readers to their arguments. Three pitfalls pervade modern advocacy. The most serious is just launching into a discussion. “Jenkins erroneously relies on McCallister v. Blaine.” Talk, talk, talk. No signposts. Readers feel as if they’re drifting at sea.

You might think you have enough to worry about today. But have you thought about how to say the word that seems to be on everybody’s lips? We may as well get it straight: the traditional way to pronounce electoral is /ee-lek-tuh-ruhl/—with stress on the second syllable. It corresponds to electorate. It’s preferably not /ee-lek-tor-uhl/, nor is it

Many legal writers are oblivious of an important secret of style: in wording a sentence, an emphatic word or phrase should fall at the end. Next time a piece of writing bores you, examine it closely. The writer is probably ending sentences with mundane information or arcana. That’s deathly. Consider two brief passages: ● Reynolds’s

My father dreams of “good grammar” once again being taught in schools. He thinks it to be part of the American dream: an aspiration available to everyone. But “good grammar” in the eyes of one person is, in the eyes of another, unacceptable intolerance toward linguistic variation. So a consensus in educational approach seems unlikely.

My 90-year-old father, bless him, got upset yesterday upon reading a Washington Post piece saying that the Trump campaign is careening toward election day. He was incensed because he thought it should have said careering toward election day. Career, you see, has traditionally meant “to move wildly at full speed,” while careen has meant “to tip to one side while moving slowly.” He

The modes of argument are as old as civilization: the ancient Greeks and Romans devised names for various rhetorical devices. Appeal to the pocketbook? The technical term is argumentum ad crumenam. Appeal to pity? It’s argumentum ad misericordiam. Use of rebuke or reproach? It’s epiplexis. A totally unsupported assertion? It’s an ipse dixit. The invocation of a looming catastrophe?

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was known for her clear, powerful prose. She learned how to write—how to write really well—from two undergraduate teachers at Cornell: Robert E. Cushman and Vladimir Nabokov. That’s right. In a 2006 interview with Bryan A. Garner, Justice Ginsburg explained that Nabokov “was a man in love with the sound of

Plain English is nobody’s mother tongue. You must work for it. You must learn to write “before” and “after” instead of the nearly ubiquitous “prior to” and “subsequent to.” In law, we’re besieged by bloated language. Unless you work tirelessly to simplify, you end up becoming just another purveyor of needless complexity and obfuscation. Take this 22-word

I’m working on three big writing projects right now: a book on one aspect of 18th-century intellectual history; a biography of a mid-20th-century artist—a refugee from Hitler’s Germany; and a U.S. Supreme Court brief. Those are three very different genres, but the techniques are similar. You ask pertinent questions and embark on a quest for

In April, the acclaimed legal historian Lawrence Friedman of Stanford Law School celebrated his 90th birthday. We applaud his many contributions to legal literature. In 1993, Friedman wrote an essay for the Scribes Journal of Legal Writing, at the invitation of its founding editor, Bryan A. Garner. Here’s part of what Professor Friedman said then: Style

Writers are made, not born. Actually, they’re self-made. It’s always a conscious decision, and it takes conscious ongoing effort. Making yourself a good writer involves as much discipline as any other vocation or profession. And because discipline isn’t a trait that comes easily to most people, you’ll have a great advantage if you can develop

Good writing is a marriage of good ideas with good expression. You must have both. The ideas need to be clear, and the language in which you express them must be clear. Clarity is the touchstone. A vague, fuzzy idea can at best be stated obliquely; any clear, solid idea can be expressed clearly. Unfortunately,

At LawProse, we revise as much as the time will allow. For letters that may be three rounds; for briefs, ten rounds; for contracts, fifteen. For books, having more than a hundred revisions isn’t unusual. We like what Justice Louis Brandeis once said: There is no good writing—just good rewriting. The key to the writing

We recently saw a cartoon in which one character says to another, “I’m thinking of writing a book.” The other responds, “Can a boring person write an interesting book?” The answer is a resounding no. A boring person can’t write an interesting book. An unintelligent person can’t write an intelligent letter. A mean-spirited person can’t

Why should it matter whether you say with regard to or *with regards to? (The asterisk indicates nonstandard English.) Anyway or *anyways? We have a way to go or *We have a ways to go? Couldn’t care less or *could care less? Regardless or *irregardless? Either way, everybody knows what you mean. It’s just that one expression typifies educated English, and the other typifies uneducated